Wind instrument of note. || Let’s just say mistakes were made. || Just one or two drinks during lunch. || The demands of glamorous dining. || On thin wings and flying faster than the speed of sound. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Stroppy and incoming. || Not as easy as it looks. || Adventures in large rock relocation. || Ripples. || Nodules. || More joys of public transport. || Zipper trouble. || Pigeon peepers. || The attempt to steal propane did not go entirely as planned. || The progressive retail experience, parts 607 and 608. || Helping hand. || Are you not inspired? || Well, I suppose he treated her as an equal. || Why spiders don’t (yet) rule the Earth. || Flatbread proportions. || Fishing will be fun, they said. || And finally, is your womb “an energetic vessel that holds ancestral imprints”?

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Speaking of “diversity” and its wonders, Heather Mac Donald ponders Germany’s ongoing experiment in self-annihilation:  

There follows a horror-show catalogue of incompetence, dishonesty, and inassimilable monsters, with criminal records of prodigious length, pious newcomers calling for the murder of “every critic of Islam,” and in which the word machete crops up quite a lot.

A dark surrealism ensues, not least with regard to the convoluted ordeal of deporting uninvited visitors bent on one’s destruction. All set against gushing media coverage of a “Techno Parade für Toleranz,” and cheery posters reminding viewers of the approved attitude: 

In terms of ideology, “diversity” seems to be the belief that the less we have in common, and feel we have in common, the happier we will be. An unobvious proposition, to say the least. Yet the word is mouthed as if it were a self-evident good, a “strength,” a moral imperative, a thing of which one could never have enough.

Update, via the comments:

Dicentra adds,

It seems to me we’ve strayed very far from the idea that an attractively developed society should – and must – be discerning about which kinds of newcomers it welcomes, lest it be flooded with incompatible tribes and the trash of the world.

The idea that the locals, the voting citizens, might want a good deal and ask, “What’s in it for us?” seems anathema to Our Betters. Likewise, the notion of a civilised society implying, quite strongly, “You’re lucky to be here. Behave accordingly.”

And so, instead, we get the routine airbrushing of crime news, and instructional videos in which ludicrous progressive women film themselves performing please-don’t-rape-me dances.

It’s a mental world in which everyone is expected to pretend that everything is fine and no grave mistakes were made, despite all available evidence. And in which the only real problem is not the ongoing, quite rapid degradation of German society, and other European societies, but those who dare to notice this unhappy transformation.

Ccscientist notes the please-don’t-rape-me dance, above, and adds,

The unrealism of such people and their peers, Our Betters, created a problem on a vast scale and which is dire in its implications – a problem that they are unwilling to fix or even clearly identify. And so, they retreat further into unrealism and absurdity, while expecting others – those on whom they’ve inflicted the problem – to become unrealistic and absurd too.

It’s the progressive way. In this and so much else.

Update 2:

Regarding the pretence above, Dicentra replies,

There’s also a weird air of displacement, of vehemently resenting those who notice the problem. And so, we get claims like this one here, in which BBC broadcaster Dan Snow denounces as “stunningly racist” even the suggestion that incompatible tribes exist. Because Mr Snow feels they shouldn’t exist, that they somehow ought not to.

And so, magically, they don’t. And only Very Bad People would say they do.

From the linked piece:

And the above, this farce, is pretty much a standard pattern.

Regarding Mr Snow, his practised obliviousness, and his rush to deploy accusations of racism, Dicentra adds,

Well, this is a pretty good summary of the phenomenon. It does rather capture the recurring dynamic:

Of course, reality is not always congenial, and what one might wish to be the case may be preferable to what actually is. I can see the appeal of a world in which everyone just rubbed along nicely with endless reciprocation and common ground. But pretending that’s the case, when it clearly, vividly, isn’t, isn’t a wise or moral way to behave.

Especially when the consequences of that pretence are imposed on others, who then, in addition, get badmouthed and vilified for daring to object. Say, people not entirely happy about the sudden ubiquity of Congolese and Somali borra gangs, whose modes of expression involve machetes, or people who discover their doorsteps literally being shat on.

Update 3:

In the comments, EmC quotes this,

And adds,

It turns out that the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University have much to offer the pretentious and racially neurotic: 

As is the custom, an operatic tone is adopted and victimhood is feigned and deployed as a credential, a basis for deference. Though particulars of any credible harm, any actual modern-day “racism,” are thin on the ground. And the reasoning, such as can be discerned, is just a tad contrived. Quite how those “undertakings of white people” – in the arts and sciences – are crushing the hopes and dreams of students, robbing them of breath, remains somewhat unobvious. Likewise, the logical or moral basis for “reparatory measures.”

Yet those doing the demanding, a group of Nottingham academics, insist that these alleged woes, these “enduring detrimental legacies,” whatever they might be, “are issues that require urgent and sustained attention.”

I’m guessing this is where the applause is supposed to go.

Despite the theatre of “ongoing emotional pain,” the proponents of degree-course “decolonisation” seem quite enthused by their scolding and leverage. Their ability to wring pretentious atonement from fellow players of the game.

The central reasoning, such as it is, seems to be that some indirect historical beneficiaries of slavery, including those born after abolition, also gave money to universities, which, in ways somewhat mysterious, invalidates those universities’ modern-day course content and renders it harmful to People Of Pigmentation. “Reading classical European literature” and “travelling to historic landmarks” are among the activities deemed tainted and bruising.

In short, on a par with other recent efforts to “decolonise” degree courses, to purge them of the “inequities” of “white knowledge,” and thereby exterminate any trace of “white supremacy.” As when the Quality Assurance Agency, an organisation that boasts of being “trusted by higher education providers and regulatory bodies to maintain and enhance quality and standards,” demanded that computing courses address “how divisions and hierarchies of colonial value are replicated and reinforced” within the subject.

I’ll give you a moment to ponder that one.

If the particulars are, again, unclear and the reliance on verbiage unconvincing, and if readers are unsure of what “neoliberal systems of power” might be, and how they might bear upon musical notation or the Royal Veterinary College, at least the antipathy towards things deemed “white,” and thus offensive, is hard to miss and evidently relished.

Despite such causal convolution, the racial browbeating is having its intended effect:

And goodness, we can’t have that.

Incoming. || Incoming 2. || Machine uprising, day 8. Previously. || Please deposit keys in secure storage box. || Load-bearing rave balcony. || Improvised theatre deemed insufficiently gay. || Gather sandbags, passports, and be ready to sell the house. || He’s a hugger. || Width issue. || When starfish attack. || “The owner serves customers while moving like a robot.” || Penetrating rays. || “Salaam, don’t stress,” he says, helpfully. || The progressive retail experience, parts 603, 604, 605, and 606. || To prevent cheating, obviously. || Quality care. || Adventures in modernity. || He “combats racism” by being obnoxious and racist. || Best not to, really. || I suspect the first sentence may be a lie. || And lo, an alarming wind. || Wheel of fortune. || First taste. || And finally, you want one and you know it.

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